PlanJam!From your screen to the scene

When you’ve been dating someone for a long time, and especially if you live together, it can be hard to remember to keep the romance alive. Between work and friends and Facebook, it seems like date night is the first thing to fall by the wayside. I am no more evolved in this department than anyone else; I’m ashamed to admit that more than a couple of Friday nights have seen me and my boyfriend choosing Netflix over braving the bar scene. But when we do go out, I’m prepared. There’s nothing worse than being stuck wandering the avenue looking for a place that isn’t so empty it’s awkward, doesn’t have garish lighting or loud/awful music playing, is informal enough that you can be comfortable and talk loudly after you’ve had a few, but is just a shade nicer than a pizza joint. Without a plan, this kind of hellish restaurant searching can go on for hours, and nothing kills the mood more than this kind of frustration. That’s why it’s good to know a handful of surefire date-friendly restaurants, so that whether you’re eating out with your husband of twenty years or out on a first date, you can appear both knowledgeable and spontaneous as you suggest a delightful little place you know right around the corner.

One of these standbys for me is Park Slope’s Sotto Voce. You can usually get a seat, they serve Brunch, and they serve perfectly decent Italian comfort food in a modern, casual-elegant setting. The restaurant escapes the usual pitfalls of date restaurants, i.e. being overly pricey, embarrassingly quiet and intimate, or being so trendy and overexposed that only obnoxious yuppies go there. That said, the restaurant has its share of problems. The waiters, though friendly, are often neglectful of their tables in my experience, and this really becomes a problem during Brunch, when endless refills of mimosas become one refill if you’re lucky. The problem may be under-staffing or poor management, but they should get it under control. I take the words “All You Can Drink” very seriously.

On a romantic night out, however, lax service doesn’t really bother me. Frankly, I’m more annoyed by the vulture-like hovering a lot of Manhattan waiters do, most likely in an effort to get you out the door faster and keep the tips coming. And the food at Sotto Voce is good enough to compensate, for the most part. Many of the Italian restaurants I’ve been to in New York suffer from a general blandness in their menu items, but with the exception of a handful of crowd pleasing dishes that could stand to be kicked up a notch, Sotto Voce manages to escape this fate. I like to start by sharing one of their gourmet salads, like the Insalata Tre Colori (arugula, endive and radicchio with grilled Portobello mushroom, served with toasted goat cheese bruschetta), with my beau, as an alternative to a boring dinner salad.

I usually stick to pasta for dinner, though the meat and fish dishes look divine. The Rigatoni Montanaro,
with Shitake mushrooms, onions and arugula in a Brandy Cream Sauce, is a rich and satisfying meatless option, while some of the best carnivorous pasta dishes include the decadent Fettuccine con Pollo e Funghi (homemade fettuccini with chicken, mushrooms and fresh rosemary in a cream sauce) and the Fettuccine al Sugo di Anatra(homemade fettuccine in a country duck ragu with black olives and tomatoes). You’ll leave with leftovers, but pasta is one of the best next-day foods there is, so no worries.

After a date at Sotto Voce, I always leave feeling a little bit lighter than air. Maybe it’s the red wine or the old-world smells of the kitchen, but Italian restaurants always do this to me, and perhaps you know the feeling. You become Lady and the Tramp for a second, and all the world is singing you a love song. Then, inevitably, a bum will flash you or something and the moment will be ruined, but it’s those little moments that make love happen, and if there’s one thing the world needs more of, it’s love.